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The National Hockey League is planning on taking a hard look at whether fighting has a place in the game.

Former NHLer Brendan Shanahan, the NHL Senior Vice-President of Player Safety and the league's new disciplinarian, admitted to CBC's Peter Mansbridge Thursday during an interview about head shots that fighting was an issue that would be discussed.

"Well I think it's something that we have to look at," Shanahan told Mansbridge. "And I said as we evolve and we learn more and more about head trauma and brain trauma, you know, I've played with a lot of these guys who do this for a living, several of them have been my roommates, they're courageous guys, they've got a gene in them that is all about protection and defending their friends, but I worry for them. And I think that is something, along with the competition committee, along with the NHLPA, we're definitely very serious about making advancements and studying blows to the head.

"We have to also look at fighting. Now what the final decision is, I can't tell you now, that's obviously something that we're going to have to look at. But there is no way that we would ever deny that it's not something that we're looking at closely."

Fighting in hockey has become a hot-button issue over the last year, in part because the number of players becoming concussed in scraps appears to be on the rise. Also, the deaths of NHL enforcers Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak this summer has led some to draw the conclusion that their on-ice roles had something to do with their passing.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has, in the past, suggested that fighting is part of hockey and would not be removed from the game.